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Married... with Children: Difference between revisions
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''[[Married... with Children]]'' is a [[Sitcom]] about consummate loser Al Bundy: Once a high school football hero dating the hottest girl in school, now a balding, starving, destitute shoe salesman—married to the same girl who's now a useless, bickering TV junkie. He's still driving the same [[The Alleged Car|piece of junk car]] he bought in high school, and is cursed with a moronic daughter who [[Really Gets Around]], a sane, yet [[Casanova Wannabe|perverted]] son, and a dog that might as well be a throw rug.
The show premiered on April 5, 1987 as the very first program ever shown by the brand new FOX Network, and along with ''[[21 Jump Street (TV series)|21 Jump Street]]'' and ''The Tracey Ullman Show'' was one of the network's few hits before [[American Football|the NFL]] and [[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]] turned the network into a major player. It was a constant ratings success until it ended in June 1997; it's still Fox's longest-running live-action sitcom. This is the show in which [[Samantha Who|Christina Applegate]] and [[Futurama|Katey Sagal]] got their starts.
Inspired and popularized a character type: the [[Jaded Washout]], actually previously called the [[Al Bundy]].
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* [[Actor Allusion]]: In one episode, Ted McGinley's Jefferson is mistaken for a character from ''[[The Love Boat]]''. He also once mistakenly referred to Al as [[Happy Days|Fonzie]].
* [[Actually Pretty Funny]]: Jefferson will occasionally laugh at Al's cracks at Marcy when she's not looking, though a quick [[Death Glare]] will shut him right up.
* [[Adaptation Decay]]: In-universe, Kelly got her own [[Show Within a Show]], and [[Executive Meddling]] completely gutted it to become more "[[Lighter and Softer|family]] [[
* [[The Alleged Car]]: Al's Dodge is quite literally one of a kind. All of the other types of its make and model have either been recalled, exploded, or simply dissolved in the rain. This is possibly due to the fact that Al's car is literally pieced together out of the parts of other broken-down, destroyed Dodges. That should give you an indication as to its actual performance. In one episode, it's revealed that its brown color is actually accumulated dirt. Underneath it's a shiny red [[Cool Car]].
* [[All Just a Dream]]:
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* [[Retired Badass]]: ''Jefferson'', of all people. One episode involved him rappelling down into Fidel Castro's office and holding him at knifepoint - only it turned out he and Fidel were old friends from Jefferson's CIA days.
* [[Risky Business Dance]]: In "Breaking up is Easy to Do, Part 2".
* [[Sadist Show]]: Before such shows as ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', ''[[Family Guy]]'', and ''[[South Park]]'', this show made fun of (at-the-time) taboo subject matter (particularly sex, feminism, homosexuality, juvenile delinquency, and political correctness), had extraordinarily raunchy jokes and [[Double Entendre]]s, and showed viewers that not all family sitcoms can be like ''[[Full House]]'' or ''[[The Brady Bunch]]'' (though this becomes a case of [[Seinfeld Is Unfunny]] when you realize that even though ''Married...With Children'' was the first successful FOX sitcom and the one that ushered in the era of dysfunctional family comedies, it's ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' that seems to be getting all the credit). Heck, even the original title of the show was supposed to be ''Not the Cosbys'' (since, at the time, ''[[The Cosby Show]]'' was popular for bringing family values back to TV—something that the show creators didn't like).
* [[Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up]]: Al, of course. [[Future Loser|How the mighty have fallen...]]
* [[Screwed by the Network]]: Where to start?
** First, there was the censors wanting to retitle an episode called "A Period Piece" (which focused on Peg, Kelly, and Marcy getting their periods simultaneously while Al, Bud, and Steve go fishing) into "The Camping Show", even though the show titles for "Married...With Children" were not shown onscreen (and not known at all until "Married...With Children" fan websites and cable guide summaries sprung up in the 1990s).
** Then, there was the whole Terry Rakolta incident, which caused an episode that wasn't even that raunchy, but still had heavy sexual references ("I'll See You in Court") to be barred from viewing until FX aired the episode a decade later and the episode was released on DVD.
** Perhaps the most egregious of all was how the series ended. You know that last episode where Kelly {{spoiler|almost gets married to the man who held her family hostage}}? Well, despite looking like the perfect plot for the final episode of a dysfunctional family sitcom, it wasn't scheduled to be that way. After FOX spent all of Season 10 moving "Married...With Children" to different timeslots (and made worse by the fact that ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' and ''[[In Living Color]]'' were gaining in popularity), the show suffered in the ratings so much that FOX decided to shut the show down after its 11th season. According to the "E! True Hollywood Story" about "Married...With Children", the actors had a lot of different ideas for what the last episode should have been. Ed O'Neill thought that the Bundys should win the lottery right before a tornado ripped through the neighborhood and killed them. Christina Applegate built on this, saying that the Bundy house should have then landed on Marcy, a la ''[[The Wonderful Wizard of Oz]]''. Ted McGinley suggested the Bundys and Marcy dying or getting hurt in some horrible fashion and Jefferson ending up relaxing on the beach with bikini-clad babes all around him.
*** The last one is [[Your Mileage May Vary|probably the only case where being screwed by the network is a good thing]].
* [[Self-Made Man]]: Stymie Bundy. Al credits Stymie's success to the fact Stymie never got married.
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{{reflist}}
{{Best in TV: The Greatest TV Shows of Our Time}}
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